


Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death

by Cambusmore



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, Arts & Sciences RPF, Literary RPF, Spirit Houses - Die Booth
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cambusmore/pseuds/Cambusmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Manda, Ray, Daniel and Alex discover the meaning of a favourite prophecy of the New Spiritualist Movement involving Byron and Shelley at Diodati.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



> Events set before those of Spirit Houses.
> 
> A yuletide treat.

"Forbes, will you duck down, I can't see."

Daniel doesn't turn around. "There's nothing to see, Alex. It's a lecture."

"Yes, thank you, I had gathered, but I find that I have trouble hearing if I can't see."

"That doesn’t entirely make sense," points out Manda quietly, although not quietly enough for some because Clement swivels in his seat to glare at them. The gesture is more disquieting than it ought to be because his irises are so light as to be nearly colourless. She couldn't say if they are the lightest blue or grey or green. And there's something about those sightless-looking eyes that unsettles Manda, like anything could be peering at her from behind them. There's a reason Clement doesn't get sent out to do field work and that has a lot to do with his unnerving gaze. Also, he's unbearable.

Alex leans across Ray between them and says to Manda behind his hand in a vaudeville whisper, "Are we certain that dead-eyed chap is quite on our side?"

"Don't use 'dead' as a pejorative," she admonishes, but she's trying rather hard not to smile while she does it.

"Please, I can't hear." Ray has spread himself wide with notes and pencils, attentive, eager not to repeat the class yet again. He sounds a little desperate and, unlike Clement, he is entirely bearable, so they listen to the lecture.

"And therefore the prophecy becomes of utmost importance at this stage when it draws four important figures to the same time and place..." Matron Tagfalter recounts the particulars of the Sun-Veil Prophecy from the bottom of the lecture theatre, poised as always in speech and manner. There are two hints that something is very much afoot, however. One is the presence of Matron herself, who should have much better things to do than to deliver a seminar on the History of Spiritual Civilization to a class of third-years. Second, Brother Ferris, reliably put-upon and stoic Ferris, rocks on his heels almost imperceptibly at her side, holding a sheaf of papers with undue care. Is that excitement that makes his sway that little bit? "You all know the prophecy, or ought to know it by now, but I will repeat it for context."

Context for what? wonders Manda. Something is happening. Something is about to happen.

_When the five mountains fire the sky and drop a veil over the meek sun, the living will wallow in hunger and hate, weak as an open wound for the taking of the dead. The end will lap at the shores of the world, rushing up its banks and yet none shall see until the tide subsumes them and drags them into the abyss. Only the four heralds, the Mother, the Sleeper, the Seer and the Key, may stanch the flood by banishing the dead and the dark, the evil and the undecided, to the harmlessness of lore._

That's the translation anyway. The real thing is carved in Lithuanian on a slab of green amber full of prehistoric midges and seeds, life trapped to death in beauty. It's one of the founding texts of the New Spiritualist Movement, but no one knows who the Heralds were, only that they must have succeeded.

"Ugh," says Alex.

Daniel does turn around this time and even though the late-day sunlight flashes off his spectacles, one can tell by the height of his eyebrows that he's expecting an explanation.

"Well, it's all a bit much, isn't it?"

"A bit much." Daniel's expression does not alter; it's not a question, it's a point being made.

"Yes, there are lots of frightful words in it and it sounds altogether unpleasant, but it doesn't really say anything." Typical Alex: if it isn't on the surface, it might as well not be there at all.

"It says rather a lot." Why does always Daniel rise to this, or lower himself to it?

"I can't hear," warns Ray.

Alex ignores him, easing back into his seat for a chat, relishing the fury he can always kindle in Daniel. "But Forbes, really, if we don't know who these Heralds are, what use is the text? We all have to learn it by rote for no apparent reason other than that Kingsford liked the way it sounds.”

Clement has turned right around to stare again, but annoyance at them is not what's caused this shift in the feeling of the room from mild lethargy to mounting expectation in the last few seconds. Tagfalter motions Ferris forward and he shifts the papers in his hands, one under and one above, as a child would cup a small treasure. It's disarming.

"I think," says Manda, "that the prophecy is about to make much more sense to you, Alex."

Ferris coughs, and steps into a shaft of waning sunlight so suited to his purpose, it's as if he cut the windows into the walls himself. "This," he begins in his gentle voice, "is a manuscript copy of Lord Byron's memoirs."

"They burnt those," mutters Alex, suddenly very intent on Ferris below.

As if in response, he continues, "It has been authenticated by our own resident expert on the subject, Mr. Tripp, as well as against some writing samples held at the Bodleian and by the Earl of Lytton." No one speaks during that deliberate, dramatic, theatrical pause. "Ladies and gentlemen, we now know the names of the Heralds with absolute certainty." Now everyone speaks and Ferris has to raise his voice above the consternation. "They were Lord Byron, John Polidori, Claire Clairmont and Mary Shelley."

The hall erupts in a buzzing astonishment that fans out from the lectern, over the rows of seats, and right up Manda's spine.

***

The fire casts more flickering shadow than light about the room and no warmth at all. Mary would wager, if she were the type, that this is entirely deliberate on Byron's part. Because of where he sits near the window, backlit by an implausibly full moon, his features are obscured and that must be planned as well. He is, she thinks, good at this. His voice carries through the room, suggestive and insinuating, despite its effeminacy. It's been Fantasmagoriana instead of sailing every night now since the weather turned markedly poor and Byron is making the most of it, flaunting his considerable skill at making people feel. It is certainly working on Claire. Good heavens, it is almost working on Mary. A voice as changeable as the man's moods: its gentle lisp, sibilant esses, some words tinged here and there with the burr of a lost Scots accent, one that has been deliberately discarded, but reappears when he's had a lot to drink. And he has, so it does. This must be yet another trick of his somehow, another facet of Byron's extraordinary ability to have entire rooms of people thinking about him, his beauty, his limp, his misdeeds, his strange voice. She wants more and less of him all at once.

Next to her, curled into the corner of the settee, Claire gives a little catch of breath as Byron quickens the pace of the story. Claire only wants more of him. Too much, really. The other night, as they whispered in bed together because Shelley had stayed the night at Diodati again, she told Mary just how much.

"I want to crawl under his shirt and skin and live in his bones," she had said with an airless giggle.

"You can't tell a person that."

"I know."

"Claire, you cannot tell him that."

"I won't," she said huffily and turned over, away from Mary. A few silent moments later, "He doesn't listen anyway."

Alarmingly, Byron does seem to listen to Mary. When she speaks, falteringly, uncertainly, he will stop whatever he is doing and give her his full attention; he puts things down, looks up from books, halts his progress, cocks his head. She feels she is being watched more than listened. Like this successive telling of ghost stories these past few nights, the fear waxing with each new tale until it's a familiar presence in the room like another member of the group, Byron must have a purpose in mind when he looks at her so.

He snaps the book shut and chuckles as each of them starts at the sound. Polidori recovers himself, embarrassed, always so worried that someone has caught him being anything but unflappable. Claire is squirming in delight. Shelley does not fare so well. Even tinted orange by the glow of the fire licking over his face, Mary can discern his pallor, his eyes starting from their sockets, wide with fear. He even seems, if she is not mistaken, to be vibrating ever so slightly from the weight of his emotions. How can he be so moved by a story which she has barely been able to follow for the way it has been told, something about a family portrait coming to life and ruining a young marriage? She wishes that Byron would not frighten him so. It affects him more than the others, more even, she suspects, than he lets on. She also wishes that she could fight her meekness and ask Byron to stop. For when, besides with these two men, is Mary ever meek?

"More?" Byron asks.

Before anyone else can attempt to answer, Claire is whining. "Oh yes, please. More." He wrinkles his nose at the desperate inflection in her voice and looks at the others. Polidori nods coolly. He is a bit ridiculous. Mary smiles. Shelley twitches.

"I have here Coleridge's Christabel, as yet unpublished. A special treat for you, Shiloh." That pet name Byron has bestowed on Shelley, who looks like a stroked cat every time he calls him by it, even now. He takes a long time to start reading, so long that one begins to feel the urge to beg. There is an intake of breath beside her, but Mary slides her hand around Claire's wrist and squeezes before she can speak and break the spell.

_'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,_   
_And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;_   
_Tu-whit! Tu-whoo!_   
_And hark, again! the crowing cock,_   
_How drowsily it crew._

It is perfect, of course. His voice spreads like a caress over them from where he sits below the refracted moon. It's remarkable: if she were any sort of scientist, she would study it, the touch in that voice, powerful but not quite good. The languor of it evokes nothing if not the fog billowing above the hallowed ground of a graveyard, clinging damply to the ankles of the bereaved. Perhaps it is the relentless morbidity of the stories or the nature of his power itself, but Mary is inevitably reminded of her dead child as she sits there. A quick shake of the head dispels that spectre like smoke and she can think of little Willmouse instead, tucked in alive and safe at Chappuis with a doting nursemaid, one whom she thinks has until now stayed out of Shelley's arms.

_Beneath the lamp the lady bow'd,_   
_And slowly roll'd her eyes around;_   
_Then drawing in her breath aloud,_   
_Like one that shudder'd, she unbound_   
_The cincture from beneath her breast:_   
_Her silken robe, and inner vest,_   
_Dropt to her feet, and full in view,_   
_Behold! her bosom and half her side–_

Shelley turns his head slowly and catches sight of Mary. He appears so bewildered and distressed that she risks the smallest smile of reassurance in his direction. It does not have the intended effect. He shoots to his feet and emits a shrill wail then, sending fear prickling across Mary's skin. Had she not seen him make it, she would not have thought the sound human. He's out of the room, scrabbling at his eyes a moment later. They stare after him, all stunned into silence. Or seemingly so.

Byron clears his throat. "Now that he's gone, we should discuss matters as thoroughly as possible. John, he overreacted quite spectacularly, will you see to him?"

"But what of the discussion?"

"I will brief you later. You will recall that you do live here with me. I have enough on my plate at the moment without a man with loose morals dying in my house, begging your pardon, Mary." Polidori glares, but complies. Dragging himself awkwardly over to a chair nearer the ladies, Byron regains his customary grace when he can sit down and cross his marred foot over his good ankle.

"That was...deliberate? Making him so frightened that he fled?" she asks in perfect astonishment, although she really should know better by now.

"I'm afraid it was and I do wish there was another way, but we must speak of the prophecy when we can. I cannot simply request that he leave the two of you here with Polidori and me without justification, Mary. Although knowing your beliefs..." he adds thoughtfully, tapping a fingertip to his chin.

"It's John and Mary now, is it?" asks Claire, unfazed and missing the point.

"Yes, I address the people I hold in high esteem by their Christian names, Miss Clairmont. Now-"

"May we call you George then?"

"My little fiend, even my mother calls me Byron. That is, when I can bear to summon her. Now-"

"But can we though?"

"No. Now," he begins again and leans forward, placing a hand over Claire's mouth, "the prophecy. How did you know that you were one of the Heralds?" he asks Mary. Eyes closed, Claire seems to be enjoying the silencing hand. It's distracting.

"The prophecy is the first thing I can remember. It was my first words. I would see it in books until the letters would unscramble and go back to what they should have been, as they were printed. No one else had heard of any of this and so I stopped mentioning it. I didn't even know that Claire knew until we all met on the shore of the lake that afternoon and you shaded your eyes and said something about the sun not being particularly meek today." It had been a feeling of deepest recognition, the thrill of her life so far, to hear those strange words and see two other heads snap up at them. Shelley, so overcome by shyness upon meeting Byron, hadn't noticed the current of appraisal and speculation running between them while they fought to keep their voices steady enough for idle chat.

"Same. And you, fiend?" He looks at Claire and she nods, eyes big and hungry. Evidently, she then licks his palm because he snatches his hand back with a grunt of disgust, wiping it on his white trousers. "This is not the first time today that I have longed to bear the responsibility of man’s continued existence with people of my own age and sex."

Polidori strides back into the room, clearly still annoyed at having been sent away. "I dosed him. He is sleeping." Not particularly reassuring.

"What frightened him so, Mr. Polidori?"

He glances at Mary, then away in embarrassment. "He says he thought of a woman with eyes for nipples and then he looked at you, madam, and was seized by a crushing dread." There is a stifled snort that could only come from Claire.

"That's nice," Mary mutters, intent on the tips of her shoes peeking out past the bud-green silk of her gown. She can sense Byron’s attention on her for some moments before he urges them on.

"Quickly now, let us say what me must. It seems we are the Heralds and it seems we are living in the time described. The sun is so shrouded by that diffuse fog in the air that it has turned fiery, but weak indeed. Spots can even be discerned upon its surface. I don't remember the sun ever being dim enough that one could look directly at it and see anything but impending blindness. And the summer has vanished. Crops are failing. I have even heard of food riots, particularly here in Switzerland. All the elements seem very much in place and if that is the case, we are vulnerable indeed."

They are thoughtful for a spell, feeling for the first time the yoke of their destiny.

"How do we banish them to lore?" wonders Mary.

Byron shrugs. "I don't know."

"I'm supposed to figure it out, I'm the Key."

"Well, have you?" Byron asks Claire.

"No."

Byron has learned to handle her well. She would love to be looked at by him, even with contempt, so he turns his attention to the ceiling instead.

"Does that mean we make people believe or not?" Mary feels this is the crux of the matter after all, that the living world is about to fall to a horde it is certain does not exist.

"Perhaps it means that if people become aware of the threat, it is no longer a threat at all." Rare insight from Claire.

"Or we make them afraid, whether they believe or not." Rarer insight still from Polidori.

Mary is breathless at just this whiff of their potential power, still entirely theoretical at this stage. She has never in her admittedly short life felt anything like powerful. "And how do we do that?"

His eyes still on the plaster rosette above, Byron says, "We write."

***

Every day, Byron asks her, “Have you thought of a story yet?” and every day, she shakes her head, abashed.

“Why don’t you ask me that?” cries Polidori, wretched from the pain of his recently injured ankle.

“Because I’m asking Mary.” He smiles kindly at her, even though the words are sharpish for Polidori’s benefit.

“Why does it matter so much?” she asks once after days of this, as sullen as she dares.

“You’ll know when you think of your story.” Still smiling. He isn’t a bad man, not like they say.

***

Byron can see the future, or some of it, but he doesn't tell anyone because when he’s let it slip in the past, they always ask questions with awkward answers. No one asks about the weather for planting or how the Rochdale fete will go. They want to know who loves them and who doesn’t, when and how they will die, whether it will hurt, will they be alone. And he’s found that whether he answers or not, and he tends not, that person will never look at him the same way again; reproach and dislike glaze the eyes like a film of tears, the contempt of the normal for the extraordinary. Just ask his wife.

As a result, he invariably downplays his powers as the Seer, pretending they amount to some weak summoning of the more anguished souls he has known, people he loved but not enough for them to die happy: his mother, Charles Matthews, Edleston… He's not sure what the others do yet, the scope of their special abilities. His new friends arrive just when friendship is in very short supply for Byron, now when he needs it most and is least inclined to beg for it. It would spoil it to admit that it doesn’t end well for any of them, and that the turn in fortunes is coming soon. He knows, of course, when he himself will die and so he rifles through causes like the pages of a quarterly for the right one for which to give his life.

He is the Seer, but he has blindspots, and this boat trip with Shelley is one of them. And like all horrible things, it starts out well enough. Shiloh has brought _Julie_ to read aloud in his cracked soprano and between bouts of Rousseau, they agree on England and cant, disagree on privilege and Claire, but there thrums an essential harmony on board ship. They travel counter-clockwise on Lake Lehman, playing at sailing more than working at it, for Swiss Maurice and his small crew are bred for it and the state of Byron’s foot means that bracing against ropes and lurching across deck to refasten errant flapping canvas becomes as near impossible as alchemy. So they ask mild questions, holding back, prodding gently at each other to see what might come out. It is, Byron knows, the first time in many, many months that there is the suggestion of mirth in the air.

The idyll cannot last; the prophecy, and Byron’s luck in general, prevents it. Even from the first, when they moor for the night at a forgotten hamlet called Nernier, fate begins to encroach, imparting a mounting sense of urgency that Byron does his best to conceal. The village seems to be populated by shy and deformed children, almost all with goiters and rough, thin skin. He hands a coin to a tiny limping boy playing in the surf of the lakeshore. When he takes it with a shy smile and hurries off as best he can, the fish in the shallows scatter and dart, sending ripples all along the water’s surface like raindrops would.

Shelley asks, “Do you ever feel as though your life is not yours for the living?”

“I did, but then I fucked an actress and I felt better.”

He doesn’t laugh. Byron can hear a grimace of something like shame in his voice. “Sometimes I see things.”

“Nonsense,” he says gently and he knows he’s hurt his fragile friend enough that he will not persist with any more confessions. He is counting on it because he does not want to have to worry about something he has yet to properly understand. Not for the first time, Byron wonders whether Shiloh’s starts and panics about the little tales they tell are an indication of something more than susceptibility. Because if the things he sees are real, then he must be very, very powerful, and if that is true, someone or something else will want that power.

It becomes clear how dearly the dead crave the pleasure of Shelley’s company within days. They set out from Meillerie on a lake at its best behavior, its surface placid and stomach-friendly, but with enough of an ice-scented breeze from between les Dents du Midi to move with satisfying speed. There is no need to speak as they look out over the expanse of the lake teeming with live silver; trading the occasional smile is more than enough to acknowledge the beauty of what feels like a gift of sun and water and rock. He lets himself think of Augusta, of the mundane paradise they found together at Newstead, snowed-in and domestic. Byron glances back at Shiloh after some time and his guts drop to his feet when he sees the tight horror on his face. Off starboard where Shelley is staring transfixed, a tall column of flies buzzes in place, so dense that the thing looks solid but with a pulsating surface.

“Maurice!” calls Byron, unable to look away. “Il faut à tout prix éviter ce…cet objet!”

“J’essaie, monsieur, mais le gouvernail ne fonctionne plus!”

It’s true; the ship’s wheel is spinning unimpeded in one direction and then the other, even with Maurice and three others trying to wrestle it still, all the while the vessel itself drawing unerringly closer to whatever malevolent thing judders before them.

There is a fraction of a second of silence when the buzzing stops and the flies drop from the air by the thousands. _And they all fall down_ , thinks Byron in that last moment of peace. For then there are gusts of hot, stinking air buffeting them in every direction, tossing huge waves full of dead flies onto the deck of the ship now careening out of control in the storm. Shelley has wrapped himself around the mizzen, eyes closed against the situation or the rusty water assailing them, and Byron crawls towards him on his hands and knees, begging him, “Look at me!” He’s not sure if he’s heard for he can barely hear himself over the shrieking wind and the other shrieking, whatever that’s coming from. Reaching him, he struggles out of his coat and begins to pry each of Shiloh’s fingers off the mast.

“Leave me!” he shouts, inches away from Byron’s ear, but so faint in the deafening noise.

“No!” Byron shakes his head and keeps at his fingers, holding one hand by the wrist when he’s got it free.

“I can’t swim!”

“I know! I will swim for both of us!” He forces a reassuring smile, even though it lets foul water into his mouth because Shelley is looking at him now so hungrily that he must believe that Byron’s face is the last thing he will ever see. Byron knows it is not.

He gets his arms around Shelley’s waist and starts dragging him across the deck to the side of the ship. The crewmen are already leaping off into the angry waves, disappearing in the ship’s mad wake. There is no resistance from his friend as he pulls him the short distance. Convinced that he is going to die, he has already given up.

“Shiloh,” Byron yells, pulling him upright by the lapels of his coat, “we can survive this, I promise you! But you must hold onto me!”

“They can have me!” he shouts back. “They can have me, I am theirs!”

The wind deflates around them, the water whipped into the air by the storms falls like the shortest burst of rain. The men look at each other, shaking the spray from their eyes and blinking into the hot, Continental sun that seemed to have fallen out of the sky less than a breath ago. Byron and Shelley still grip each other by their clothes, panting and staring, until Byron smiles.

***

Later, in a dirty inn in St-Gingoux, Shiloh speaks for the first time in hours. “What did you see in the storm, Byron?

“Flies. Nothing. Why?”

“I saw myself. I was there, beckoning, speaking.”

He does not want to know, not really. “What were you saying?”

“Swim for it.”

***

That same night where a different storm rages across the lake, Mary catches the outline of Claire’s body in her shift as they undress for bed, the bulge distinct in the flash of lightning.

“Oh no, Claire.” moans Mary.

“You should talk!” she spits back, but when she burrows under the covers next to Mary, she can’t help but nuzzle at her shoulder, aching for affection, no matter what she receives in return.

“Does he know?”

“No.”

“He will be furious.”

“Yes.” Then, “I love him.”

Mary says the cruelest and truest thing she has ever had to, “He does not love you back, Claire.”

After a long moment of breathy quiet, she whispers, “I know. But it will.”

Mary tries to sleep, but thinks of all the things that frighten her instead: Claire’s child not being Byron’s after all, ghosts, drowning, her father, losing Shelley, riots, that man Darwin making pieces of vermicelli come to life, grave robbers, Willmouse dying…And as she lies there, watching the storm batter the willow outside in intermittent flashes, thinking about life and creation, she suddenly has her story, like a key turning in the lock. And she knows that she isn’t the Mother in the prophecy – Claire is.

***

At Diodati, Polidori is having a dream. He is the Sleeper and that means he can commune with all the beasties Byron reads to them about in the dark. They come in through the closed window or out of the mirror to sit heavily on his chest and have a chat. His studies in medical school have led him to believe that this happens to many other people, but that they panic and flail instead of attempting discourse. It is never fear he feels, only annoyance at the interruption or discomfort at their dense weight.

Tonight, it slithers out of the pooling moonlight on the floor, pink and furry with empty eye sockets and a grinning mouth full of blue-black worms. He's not met this one before.

“What?” he prompts, eager to get back to his previous dream.

It bounces its little round body on him in glee until he coughs from the pressure. “Shiloh,” its voice oozes out from behind the agitated worms, the sound somehow like dripping, “he is ours. He made a gift of himself.”

“So?” Polidori _hates_ Shelley.

“It was too easy. You should hurry with your story. I like people. I want there to be people.”

“There won’t be any people if I don’t write my story?” That’s quite flattering, really, even if it’s horrible.

The thing shakes its whole body ‘no’ as it lacks a neck. “People are simple. The living need to see the dead to be afraid enough. A shape all people understand and fear. If people come to know the shapes, they strip the angry ones of their power to surprise. They get trapped in dreams and cannot leave that plane. Most will exist only in imagination, in stories.”

"Most?"

"Not all, but enough."

So the Heralds were roughly correct. “And we are to do this? Give them shape?”

“Some of you.” And it giggles like driving rain. “You will help people imagine. And then they will come up with their own rules and protections and they will be safe for a time.”

Polidori is not convinced. “I haven’t even a hint of an idea for a story.”

“What about this?” asks the thing, but in Byron’s voice. Polidori starts as the weight shifts and Byron is there, laying atop him along his full length, his face above Polidori’s own even whiter than usual in the gloom. His faint smirk deepens when Polidori swallows loud enough for both to hear. Byron’s unclad form draws all the light to it like marble, as he moves against Polidori in a way that is an utter revelation. “Will you do something for me, John?” He nods, mouth open with the effort to get any air at all in his lungs. Byron pushes Polidori’s chin up and away with compelling fingertips. What starts as a kiss to his exposed neck turns to death as Byron’s teeth sink easily into his carotid bulb, Polidori’s heart pumping all of his life into another man’s mouth.

And then he’s awake, confusion ebbing away, quickly subsumed by shame. But he has an idea for the story now, at least. He tries to go back to sleep, but he can hear his heart beating and he hates that. It’s like the tick of a clock counting down the time he has left.

***

Ferris smiles, sweeping the rapt faces from one end of the lecture theatre to the other with his proud gaze. Their reaction is everything he had hoped it would be. Retying the string around the manuscript at the lectern, he says, “The summer passes, like seasons do. Mary writes about revenants and Polidori about vampires so that people will know what they should fear. Byron describes the end of the world in a poem he’ll call Darkness as a warning to the enemies of the living that they know their aims. Claire has Byron’s child. Shelley never learns to swim. Together, they saved the world that way. This era,” he holds Byron’s memoirs aloft, “may seem like the bad old days because they knew of only the smallest fraction of paranaturals, they used terminology we find offensive today, their methods may seem naïve and mostly ineffective. But, without the Heralds, we would not have had the chance to do our important work today. We now know just how near a thing it was.”

***

Daniel and Ray stand aside to let Manda through the front door of University Hospital, but Alex follows right behind her, giving them a wink and a mocking nod of thanks as he passes through. Outside, the last of the day is dazzling, everything limned in soft, waning gold. They walk down the steps, four abreast, arguing amiably about the prophecy.

“That was all very convenient,” says Alex.

“What, the prophecy?”

“Yes, Forbes, the prophecy. Everything fell quite neatly into place.”

Manda interjects before they can start sniping, “Of course it did, Alex, because it was true.”

“Hmm. Well. At least Byron was a laugh.”

She rolls her eyes. “You would think that.”

“Claire Clairmont didn’t do much, though. What was the point of her?” Daniel is playing the whole matter over and over in his mind, taking it apart and putting it back together like he does everything else.

“She was there,” says Ray, “and sometimes that’s enough.”

They set off for town then and gossip shamelessly most of the way there, but Daniel stays quiet, thinking about what Ray said for a very, very long time.


End file.
